


"Hearts and Kidneys are Tinkertoys"

by APgeeksout



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-15
Updated: 2011-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-19 10:57:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/200081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the smell that drew him to the kitchen.  He imagined the carmelized sugar arranging itself into a translucent hand, drifting through the house to hook him by the nose like a Looney Tunes character, draw him out from under the blankets toward its source.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Hearts and Kidneys are Tinkertoys"

**Author's Note:**

> Title and recognizable dialogue gleefully snagged from Mel Brooks's "Young Frankenstein"

It was the smell that drew him to the kitchen.He imagined the carmelized sugar arranging itself into a translucent hand, drifting through the house to hook him by the nose like a Looney Tunes character, draw him out from under the blankets toward its source.Grey light from the junkyard slanted in the windows, throwing long shadows out from the sturdy furniture, but the low flame of a lit burner cast a warm glow around the old gas stove.Gilded the hardware on the cabinets, the charm back in its rightful place around his brother’s neck, the fork rotating delicately in his right hand.

“Dean?” His voice sounded bleary even to his own ears.He’d been sleeping hard for a change, even folded up enough times to fit on Bobby’s couch, lulled to sleep by the miracle of his brother, alive and safe and close enough to touch.

“Hey, kiddo.Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“S’alright.What time is it?” he asked, dropping into one of the kitchen chairs, watching Dean continue to twirl the fork above the burner with all the concentration he might have brought to bear on a complicated purification ritual.

“Right this minute, little brother,” he pronounced solemnly, “it is marshmallow time.”

The broad, easy grin that followed the proclamation made Sam’s chest ache, just as it had every one of the precious few times he’d seen it since Dean had been returned to him.He’d begun to look forward to rolling his eyes and really meaning it, to being able to take for granted his brother’s being gluttonous and ridiculous and infuriating and exhausting and _Dean_.

Dean drew the fork back from the flame, studied the marshmallow speared at the end, browned and melty enough to lose shape, and finally popped the whole sticky mess into his mouth, eyes slipping shut as he gave a soft, blissed-out, vaguely obscene little moan.

“"Oh, do you like it?”” Sam asked, _almost_ managing to keep a straight face, “"I’m not partial to desserts myself, but this is excellent.””

“"Who are you talking to?”” Dean returned, mouth full, eyes going wide as his smile as he took up Igor to Sam’s Frederick Fronk-en-steen.

“"To you!You just made a yummy sound.””

“"I didn’t make a yummy sound.I just asked you what it is.””

“"But you did!I just heard it!””

“"It wasn’t me!”” Dean exclaimed.

Sam laughed, and he tried to keep it quiet – if Bobby came downstairs, it wouldn’t be to treat them to his rendition of “Puttin’ on the Ritz” – but there was no suppressing the edge of hysteria, the dead giveaway that he could have started bawling as easily as chuckling.“I missed this.”

“Me too,” Dean said, voice quiet, hands already busy again with the bag of marshmallows. “You still like yours burnt?”

Sam nodded, not trusting his voice not to betray him, caught in the memory of peeking out of a sheet fort, Dean toasting marshmallows over a hotplate and prattling on about how camping with Dad would be way cooler than going with Sam’s boring second-grade class, anyway.

They were both silent while Dean fished a second fork out of the drawer beside the sink, loaded each with a marshmallow, and turned back to the stove to toast both simultaneously; turning his own quickly over the low flame, leaving Sam’s suspended motionless until it blackened and caught fire.He let it burn a moment, then with a couple of deft flicks of his wrist put it out.He held the charred treat out without stepping away from the stove, and Sam took the fork, and nibbled at the blackened edge of the marshmallow as he watched Dean work on browning his own evenly.

He caught himself watching Dean constantly now, like the days after Broward County to the power of ten. And if he didn’t recognize his brother in the hesitant, unsteady man he sometimes saw, Sam knew guilt and shame and nights of broken sleep too well not to identify them, even when he met them someplace as unfamiliar as Dean’s face.

“Nightmare?” he asked, and Dean turned partway from the stove to slouch wearily against the counter.

“Nah, just a craving.I’ve had too much fire and not nearly enough marshmallows lately.” His smile shifted to the bright, brittle one Sam had always hated.The one Dean used to laugh about things that could never be funny.

“Don’t, Dean.You don’t have to make this smaller than it is,” he said.“I can handle it,” he added, even as a lump rose in his throat to make a liar of him.

“Maybe I’m not doing it for you, Sammy,” he said, and for a moment, Dean’s eyes in the firelight were so awful that not looking away felt like the first test that Sam hadn’t failed in months.

“You know I’m here when you’re ready,” he said, expecting Dean to move them back to more comfortable territory by calling him a girl or making his own pain the punchline of another feeble joke.One Sam would let pass by this time.

Instead, Dean scoffed, “Sure, you’re always here for me,” and turned back and extinguished the burner, “Except when you disappear in the middle of the night.”

Sam couldn’t find a reply true enough or fast enough before Dean continued in a voice colder than the light spilling in the window.“What? You forgot who taught you how to sneak out in the first place, or you just think I’m too pathetic lately to notice that you’re up to something? Don’t invite me to share and care if you’re not going to play, too.”

And as his brother stepped out onto the back porch, pulling the door firmly closed between them, Sam reminded himself that the marshmallow was supposed to taste like ashes.He’d asked for that.


End file.
